Other Alice

by Michelle Harrison

  ‘Or maybe it doesn’t work if you can’t talk underwater,’ Tabitha said sarcastically.

  I sat back and looked at the cat questioningly. Her tail flicked towards the window, like a finger pointing. I got up from the table. The curtains were still open, the other side of the glass dark as ink. The kitchen and everyone in it were reflected back at me clearly . . . but aside from the cat there were four figures, not three.

  Alice stood next to me in the glass, her mouth still moving silently. I could see her more clearly now. Her face was solemn, and there was a dark mark on her forehead and another on her cheek. They looked like bruises. Had someone hurt her?

  ‘I can’t hear you!’ I said helplessly.

  The Alice reflection pointed up. I resisted the urge to ask her what she meant, for it would still count as a question.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I told her.

  Alice’s lips moved again, mouthing a word. Mirror.

  ‘She wants me to go to a mirror,’ I said. ‘Just me. The rest of you wait here. There’s one upstairs.’

  I turned, passing the sink. Shallow pools of water had collected in a few cups and dishes that were waiting to be washed. Several watery Alices stared back from them, bubbling softly every time she tried to speak.

  I ran through the house and up the stairs. Alice’s face gazed back from the glass of every framed photo and every picture, reflected like a ghost that wouldn’t give up haunting us.

  I reached Mum and Dad’s room, flicking on the light and skidding to a halt in front of the large, free-standing mirror reflecting the room behind me: the hastily made bed, the dressing table, the nightdress hanging from the back of the door.

  All that was missing was me . . . and Alice.

  ‘Where are our reflections?’ I whispered. I lifted my hand and waved it in front of the glass, seeing no evidence of it mirrored there. ‘Alice,’ I said. ‘If you’re there, show yourself.’

  In the doorway reflected behind me, a figure stepped into the room, coming closer to the mirror from within. She moved right up to the glass, her fair hair loose over her shoulders. She wore an old T-shirt that I’d seen many times before. There was a hole in the sleeve. I realised with a jolt that it was the same T-shirt I’d used to make the clothes on the Likeness.

  Alice lifted one of her hands to the glass and rested it there. Her mouth moved, and I knew the shape of my name on her lips so well that it was a second before I realised that I hadn’t actually heard the word out loud.

  ‘I still can’t hear you,’ I said.

  Alice took her hand from the glass, then placed it back in the same position, indicating that I should do the same. Slowly, I lifted my hand and held it up to hers, a mirror image. The glass rippled where our fingers met, before lying flat. Then, like I’d come up to the surface after swimming underwater, I heard her.

  ‘Can you hear me now?’ Alice asked. There was a slight echo to her voice, as if she were in a large, open space.

  ‘Yes!’ I pressed my fingers harder against the glass, as if I could somehow grab her and pull her into the room with me, but the glass stayed flat. A familiar smell filled the room, a smell that I associated with Alice. Not her perfume, or her shampoo . . . something else. A musty, papery kind of smell.

  Books.

  Questions crowded into my mind. It was all I could do not to blurt them out. I had to think of ways to ask them without actually asking, ways to get Alice to tell me what I needed to know.

  ‘You know how this works,’ Alice said softly. ‘You only get one question. Choose it well.’

  I nodded, determined to play the game. To bend the rules. ‘You have marks on your face,’ I said at last. ‘They look like bruises.’

  ‘On my face?’ Alice lifted her other hand, the one that wasn’t against mine, to her face. ‘I don’t remember getting any bruises.’

  ‘On your cheek and forehead.’

  She frowned. ‘I can’t feel anything.’

  ‘I don’t know who you’re with,’ I continued. ‘Or where you are.’

  ‘There’s no one else here,’ Alice answered. ‘I don’t know where I am, either, but I’m all alone here. There are no people, only words.’

  Only words? What did that mean? My eyes stung, hot with tears. But it was working. I was getting answers without asking questions. ‘I miss you. I wish you were back here.’

  ‘I don’t know how to get back. I’m trapped! You’re the only one who can help me now.’

  ‘Tell me what to do,’ I said, then flinched as something ran across Alice’s forehead. Something small and dark like a bug, but when I looked closer I saw it was a word. Twist, it said, in Alice’s curly handwriting. I blinked, unsure of what I was seeing, until it wriggled out of view. A few seconds later another word appeared on her cheek. This one was trapped. It vanished into her hair.

  ‘I’m in trouble, big trouble,’ said Alice. ‘I didn’t know where the story was going. I lost control of it. So I tried to get it back, but it went wrong . . .’

  How? I wanted to shout. What have you done? How do we put it right? Instead, I waited, saying nothing and praying she would continue.

  ‘They’d already started coming for me.’ Her voice had dropped, only a little above a whisper. ‘I knew it was only a matter of time before they all got out of the story, but I thought maybe if I were the one to bring them here, I could still control them somehow. And then I changed my mind . . . or tried to. I was too afraid after what happened last time . . .

  Last time? Of course. Last summer. The other story that Alice had destroyed.

  ‘The Hangman,’ I remembered. A shiver crept over my skin, like pins were being jabbed all over me.

  Alice nodded. ‘And others. They wanted their ending and I couldn’t give it to them.’

  ‘And now it’s happening again. Gypsy, and Piper, and the cat – they’re all here.’

  Alice nodded solemnly. ‘It won’t just be them. There are others, ones you need to watch out for. They’re dangerous, and crazy . . . and they won’t want the ending I had in store for them – they’ll want to change it.’ Her eyes were wide, fearful. ‘Ramblebrook and Dolly Weaver, but there’s something you need— ’

  ‘Dolly Weaver!’ I blurted out. So she was one of Alice’s characters. ‘I haven’t met Ramblebrook yet,’ I told her hurriedly. ‘And I don’t think Gypsy, or Piper, or the cat know that . . . know what they really are. But they know about the notebook. Gypsy’s searching for it – and so is Dolly.’

  ‘I know and that’s why they mustn’t get it!’ Alice’s voice was panicked. ‘Put it somewhere safe, somewhere only you know about. And Midge, I have to tell you something about Dolly—’

  ‘It’s too late,’ I interrupted. ‘I’m sorry. It was stolen, except for a few pages. The rest was taken by Dolly, and she’s even been here in the house tonight, looking for the loose pages.’

  Alice closed her eyes. ‘I was afraid you’d say that. I thought we might still have time, but it’s all happened so quickly.’ She opened her eyes. ‘All this is my fault.’ She shook her head miserably.

  ‘Then tell me how to fix it!’ I pleaded. ‘There must be a way.’

  ‘Get the notebook back,’ Alice instructed. ‘Hide it. Then you have to find my father. Ask him about the curse . . . and how to break it.’

  Her father?

  ‘That’s where this all began,’ Alice continued. ‘And where it has to end.’

  ‘How do I find him?’ I said. ‘You barely found him yourself—’ I clapped my hand over my mouth, realising my mistake. I’d done it. I’d unthinkingly asked a question. ‘I’m sorry,’ I groaned. ‘I didn’t mean to – it just popped out!’

  Alice looked at me, her face a mixture of pride and sadness. ‘Don’t be sorry, little brother. You’ve done so well and been so clever. But now I can only answer this, then I have to go.

  ‘There’s a box under Mum’s bed. She thinks no one knows about it, but I do. She keeps things in there, things from the
past. Look inside it and it’ll tell you how to find him.’ Another word scuttled across her face and she flicked at it. It landed on the mirror, back to front, then flipped itself over like a little caterpillar. Hearth, it read. It skittered away in the mirror’s reflection. I turned, unable to help myself, scanning the floor for it, but there was no sign. When I turned back to the mirror, I was just in time to see it vanish under the bed. What were all these words surrounding her? A thought hit me: if Gypsy, Piper, Dolly and the cat were here, then could Alice be . . . there? In the story they had left?

  The room behind Alice in the reflection began to darken, like the light was failing. Above my head, the light bulb flickered. My hand was still pressed against the glass to Alice’s. I was aware that it was getting warmer, uncomfortably warm. The darkness in the mirror got thicker, like smoke, and words were floating through the air like ash.

  ‘Alice,’ I begged. ‘Don’t go yet!’

  She shook her head, as helpless as I was, and I saw that she was speaking, but I was unable to hear her any more. I thought I could make out the word ‘Dolly’ on her lips but whatever she was trying to say was now lost, as she was. Stricken, I realised I’d interrupted Alice twice when she’d been trying to tell me something, in my desperation to get my own words out. Now it was too late.

  Her eyes and hair were wild. She was barely a shadow now. The heat from the glass was too much to stand. I pulled my hand away and there was a resounding crack as Mum’s mirror shattered. I scrambled back, afraid the glass would fall, but it stayed where it was, blackened around the edges and reflecting my shocked face back at me.

  Alice was gone.

  I’d messed it up. If only I’d stayed smart, if only I hadn’t forgotten myself and blurted out that question. If only.

  I stared at the cracked mirror, my heart drumming like thundering hooves. What were all those words that had wriggled over Alice in her glassy prison?

  Trapped . . . Hearth . . . Twist?

  Hearth . . . ?

  I turned and ran downstairs into the living room, crouching down in front of the fireplace. I knew what I was looking for now. I’d remembered.

  The grate still had the remains of the fire from last night. No one had swept it out. I shifted the coal bucket out a little, streaking ash across the hearth. A balled-up piece of paper rolled out from where it had been lodged out of sight.

  Alice had been aiming for the fire, but she’d missed.

  I picked up the piece of paper and smoothed it out, then began to read.

  12

  Writer’s Block

  AT AROUND THE SAME TIME as gypsy spindle was puzzling over her map, and Piper was hitching his third ride of the morning, a girl who looked very much like Gypsy was sitting warm in front of a fire at home in Fiddler’s Hollow.

  The girl’s name was Alice and, like Gypsy, she was sixteen years old. She also happened to be – again like Gypsy – a writer. She had a notebook open on her lap and a pen in her hand, but she had not turned the page all evening, nor managed to write a sentence without crossing it out.

  She was writing a story, but she knew now that the story was getting the better of her. It was not just any story, like the ones she had written many times before to amuse her younger brother. It was a novel, and her most ambitious work to date, but, despite beginning well and being over three-quarters written, she now found herself stuck.

  She stared at the page, rereading the same sentences. She’d read them so many times that they no longer held any meaning, like a threat repeated, but never carried out. Yet Alice was aware of a real threat, should she not continue with the tale. She had been stuck like this before. It had not ended well for her or that story, for she had been forced to destroy it, and she felt that things might be going the same way now.

  She didn’t want to destroy this. She couldn’t. She was too close and had worked too hard on it to give up. There had to be a way. She had to find an ending before the characters chose it for themselves.

  Long ago, Alice’s father had told her that, if she wanted to be a writer, every story must have an ending. Even if it wasn’t very good, or if it was silly. He’d made her promise, and she always thought it was simply advice. It wasn’t until sometime later that he told her the reason why, and after she’d had a glimpse of what could happen if she disobeyed.

  The first time she defied this advice was when she was twelve years old. The story she’d been working on had dried up and become stale, and she was feeling particularly bitter about her father not being around. She left the story unfinished and began another, but soon became plagued by dreams in which the characters in the abandoned tale were bothering her. Night after night they came, demanding answers, demanding endings, until finally Alice could bear it no longer and forced herself to finish the story. With that, the dreams stopped, and she told herself she wouldn’t leave a story unfinished again.

  She kept to this for three years until she decided to try her hand at a slightly longer yarn, eventually writing her characters into problems she could find no solution to. After several days of being unable to move the story on, the dreams began again. This time, however, with the improvement in her writing skills, they were far more vivid.

  At first, she welcomed them, for it was a strange and wonderful thing to be able to speak to the characters she had created and imagined for so long. But in every story there has to be a villain, and the problem with monsters is that those of our own making are the most terrifying of all.

  Alice began to sit up at night, drinking coffee to stay awake, hunched over her notebooks and willing the words to come. They wouldn’t.

  Soon after that, the characters came instead and not just in her dreams.

  They started off as shadows, quick movements glimpsed out of the corner of her eye. Then came reflections in shop windows, the footsteps behind her on an empty street, the figure sitting outside the house.

  The doorbell ringing in the middle of the night.

  She burned the story soon after. Every page, every last note, exorcising them like ghosts. She didn’t miss them. She became well again. She wrote other stories. She remembered it as an illness, a fever, the product of an overworked mind.

  The following year she felt strong enough to try again. A new novel, new characters. She told no one what she was doing; it was to be a surprise. She wrote and she wrote. Five thousand words became ten thousand. Ten thousand became twenty. The blank pages in her notebook lost their crispness, becoming fat and full like a feather pillow.

  Then one day the words stopped coming.

  There were days Alice didn’t write at all, and days she did only to delete more than she’d written. When the dreams began, she told herself it was fear, nothing more. But then the shadow movements started, and she knew that it wouldn’t be long before the characters came for her. Soon one did; the worst one of all.

  She knew the others would follow, one by one, stepping out of the pages and beyond her control. And what then? Where did she fit in, and what role would she play, if the story were no longer hers? That night, as she watched the flames dancing in the grate, a glimmer of an idea took hold. An idea for a truly wonderful twist . . .

  Alice had always enjoyed a twist in the tale.

  Perhaps there was a way she could still be the one in control of it all. If they were coming anyway, what harm could there be in Alice speeding things up? In actually writing them out of the story herself? At least this way she would be ready for them, and it might give her some idea of how much power she still had over them.

  Alice chewed the end of her pen, thinking deeply. Then she began to write.

  Gypsy’s and Piper’s paths had not crossed for six years, but fate was about to play a part.

  It was a wet and windy morning when Gypsy’s fortunes appeared to change. She woke shivering and dressed quickly, then shook the last few porridge oats into a pan on the stove with some milk to warm. She’d have to stop off somewhere today. Supplies were low. While she ate,
she had a quick look at her map. The nearest town was three miles south. She could be there by mid-morning.

  When breakfast was finished, she washed up, then went out on deck. The rain had stopped, but the air was still damp and stung her cheeks. It didn’t help her already low mood. She was still hungry and exhausted. Her plan wasn’t working. The search for her mother was running out of clues.

  She’d always imagined that looking hard enough for something meant it would eventually have to be found. She now realised that perhaps this didn’t apply to people who wanted to stay hidden. She had to find another way to undo the curse.

  The trouble was she was broke and all out of ideas. Plus, her papa must be wondering where she was by now. She sighed, pulling a dead plant from a flowerpot on the roof and throwing it into the canal. Perhaps it was time to go home. She clambered down inside the cabin again, then noticed that her little notepad, the one she carried everywhere with her, was on the table.

  It was open.

  A pencil lay beside it, its lead resting on the creamy white paper like a pointing fingertip. She didn’t remember leaving it open. Something had been written on the page in a hurry, in writing similar to but not exactly like her own:

  Gypsy snatched up the notepad and held it to her chest, eyes darting round the cabin. It hadn’t been there when she was having breakfast, she was sure of that. But there was nowhere to hide, and only one way in and out; the rear entry to the cabin was locked. Surely someone hadn’t been able to sneak down here in the brief moments she’d been out on deck?

  She ran outside again, searching the muddy banks and towpaths for any signs of movement. There were none except for a few wild swans and moorhens. There weren’t even any other boats in sight. She was alone on the water.

  Unsettled, Gypsy unhooked the mooring and moved off, steering the boat through the waterways. The swaying motion helped to calm her racing mind. She was so lost in her thoughts that it was a while before she noticed the path she was taking did not resemble the one on her map. The first she knew of it was a crooked signpost saying BLACK WATER – 1.5 MILES.